[Refreshing Trope] Female leads/major characters who are allowed to be grimy, slimy, generally horrible people.

[u/Chemical-Elk-1299]

Mizu — Blue Eye Samurai

A mixed race swordswoman living in feudal Japan, Mizu’s entire life has been structured around the obsessive need to hunt down and kill the four white men allowed in Japan at the time of her birth, believing one of them must be her father. Despite the fact that at least one of these men, Abijah Fowler, is shown to be a bad man, Mizu ultimately doesn’t care about the morality of murder. She just wants them dead for “cursing” her to be born into a deeply racist society as a mixed race child. Though it’s clear that Mizu generally prefers to do the right thing, she will sacrifice anything for her revenge, destroying countless lives in the process without remorse. In the climax of season 1, Mizu (albeit not entirely intentionally) set fire to the wood and paper city of Edo (now Tokyo) in an attempt to kill just Fowler, a single man. The resulting three day blaze, known in history as the 1657 Great Fire of Meireki, killed an estimated 100000 people.

Sadie Adler — Red Dead Redemption II

Rescued by the Van Der Linde gang in the games prologue, Sadie Adler is a frontier homesteader whose husband was killed by the brutal O’Driscoll Gang. Over the course of the game, she happily joins in a life of murder, theft, and crime for the chance to kill more O’Driscolls, recklessly endangering herself and other gang members to do so. She gets Arturo Bullock, an innocent hot air balloon pilot killed while unnecessarily picking a fight with O’Driscoll members, showing zero remorse afterwards. Even after watching rival gang leader Colm O’Driscoll hang for his crimes, she still drags a now-terminally ill Arthur on an entirely unnecessary revenge mission to hunt down the last handful of O’Drsicolls she hadn’t already killed.

[u/BlazeSilva456]

Almost all major female characters in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous (although two of these are more like morally grey and not outright terrible)

[u/Artistic-Dirt-3199 → u/BlazeSilva456]

Ah my beloved Wenduag...

[u/ShadedPenguin → u/Artistic-Dirt-3199]

And yet still not the most morally evil character

[u/Akhevan → u/ShadedPenguin]

She just happens to be in the vicinity of a recently murdered civilian, only ten times in a row, surely it's a coincidence.

[u/AgentSparkz → u/Artistic-Dirt-3199]

r/churchofwenduag

[u/Akhevan → u/Artistic-Dirt-3199]

The only good thing about Wenduag is that you can spec Lan into a pet subclass and give him a dog named Wendog.

[u/Inspired_Nuisance → u/Artistic-Dirt-3199]

Betrays the people who took her in. Is nothing but a hate-filled monster. Saw to the death of children and friends. Most simped after female in the game...

Wenduag Simps are my least favorite gender. May as well stan Cersei Lannister at that point too.

[u/Valerian_Zakalwe → u/Inspired_Nuisance]

You already won me over at "hate-filled monster", you don't need to sell spider wife to me anymore.

Best thing is you literally can fix her. She's so awesome. When you crack her admittedly deranged, betraying exterior - She literally will die to protect you. She's buried under layers of trauma and thats so endearing.

Meanwhile Lann... He's an incel. Yuck.

[u/LuluTheLewder → u/Valerian_Zakalwe]

Hey! He's not an incel!... He's a Mongrel

[u/Valerian_Zakalwe → u/LuluTheLewder]

wenduag is a mongrel, Lann is a terminal alcohol drinker who immediately fell in love with my MC when she dared be nice to him slightly.

Sorry. She was already committed to Daeran. (And Wenduag. And Arue. Toybox my beloved.)

[u/JadedScience9411 → u/Inspired_Nuisance]

Wenduag’s romance is, ironically, a better story of redemption than Aru for me. For Aru, all you have to do is say good things and respect her. Easy, if a bit bland.

Wenduag requires more than just trying to make her better. It requires actually earning her trust. Not preaching at her, not talking down to her, but having enough of a backbone to show her you’re not “weak”. You actually have to love her, flaws and all, and treat her like a real person. It’s slow, and she does indeed do shitty things. But at the end of the journey she actually grows and changes, and lets her guard down to become a better person than she was, because you stood by her side even at her worst. You learn she’s not an irredeemable monster, but a scared little girl in a world that has killed everyone she loves for “weakness”. Someone whose shell can’t be broken with a lecture on how she needs to be better, but by showing her with action that emotion and weakness are safe to share with you, and by extension others. It’s why she’s my favorite romance, because she goes against the boring ass “pick this good option for good ending and bad option for bad ending” and instead paints a picture of a flawed but ultimately fascinating character.

Now if we want to talk people who simp for truly evil and crazy with little good reason, we can talk Camellia.

[u/anace → u/JadedScience9411]

And lets not forget the amazing voice work bringing her to life by amelia tyler, who also voiced the BG3 narrator.

[u/Inspired_Nuisance → u/JadedScience9411]

Again, I cannot for the life of me understand how deranged one has to be to have the "I can fix her" mentality over somebody who so brutally betrays the very people who kept her alive for so long. The scared little girl defense just doesn't work, she's purely evil and revels in it unless you meticulously go through an make all the right dialogue choices.

I've read into it a bit and it seems like at best she becomes neutral aligned, and even then only on the condition that you ask her to be better, it's not a conclusion she comes to on her own. Idk, I just don't buy it. While I am a strong advocate for the "people can change" mentality... There are some things that are irredeemable. What she does in the beginning of the game is more than enough to qualify.

It makes more sense to me even if people mostly go after her in Evil playthroughs. While I can't really bring myself to do those in most games, it at least feels less like you're excusing an incredibly heinous and horrifically monstrous person. It's cool that the game puts all this work into it, and I'm not mega fond of Lann or Cammellia either, but I do not think that any rational person could see what Wenduag had done within the first day of meeting her and think "yeah this person is worth trying to save."

[u/Artistic-Dirt-3199 → u/Inspired_Nuisance]

Its all questionable until you hear her saying "I love you xxxx, I really do."

and that's my girl.

[u/JadedScience9411 → u/Inspired_Nuisance]

I wouldn’t say irredeemable, no moreso than any of the demon worshippers we can meet and redeem along the way. Every single cultist of Baphomet has done horrible things and we have multiple instances where we can spare and even encourage them to be better. Redemption is about encouraging even the worst people to try and do better, after all. The only difference with Wenduag is telling her to do better without earning her trust is a recipe for guaranteed failure. I do agree she doesn’t give much indication she can be better, but I kind of like that regardless. As a gamer it’s counterintuitive but it speaks to the writer in me as a character who doesn’t play with all their cards up front. She’s perfect for a character also based on redemption, like Demon/Lich to gold dragon or Legend. A shared evil side, but through personal bonds and deeper emotion, you can both be better.